I am a Norwegian and a European. Learning a couple extra languages in school is considered the normal thing to do around here. While English was mandatory from grade school and German recommended in middle school, I did not get to French until high school. Our teacher was quite old and about to retire; her eyesight and hearing were failing at that time, and concentration was flagging as well. Years of dealing with teens had not raised her expectations very high, I’m afraid. I did get a decent grade, but with no reason to practice it ever again, only a few scattered phrases – mostly from songs – remained in my memory after almost 40 years, when I discovered Duolingo.
To be honest, I have no particular need for French. Google Translate does a great job with French, unlike non-European languages. But it seemed a good place to start to test Duolingo, at a time when only a few languages were available.
I did what many first-time users of Duolingo do: Start out with full sails, and then got distracted and used the app less and less. Every few months I would return to the game, refresh the basics and learn a little more. And then I would forget about it again.
In retrospect, this may not have been such a bad strategy, especially for a language that I already had a vague memory of. After some returns, I had a pretty good grasp of the basics, and could quickly get to adding new words and concepts.
But I still could not say for sure how much was due to Duolingo, how much to my almost forgotten high school days, and how much to French pop songs that I have enjoyed over the years even if I did not understand them. So that’s why I decided to try a language I had never known a word of. But that does not mean I have given up on French. I am still filling my quota of 20 XP per day, at least for the time being.